Every guide here draws on the casts covered elsewhere on Characters.biz. When we talk about a mentor archetype, a tragic villain or a found family, we point to characters you can look up in a click. The guides are written for three kinds of reader: writers building their own characters, students analysing someone else's, and fans who want words for things they've always noticed.
All guides
Where to start
If you write
Start with Character Design 101 for how a character looks, then character development for how they change. Naming conventions and archetypes fill in the rest of the toolkit.
If you analyse
Villain types, anti-heroes and redemption arcs give you the vocabulary. Ensemble casts and iconic rivalries show how characters define each other.
If you just watch
Use the watch order guide before starting a long franchise. Read spoiler etiquette before posting about it, and try power scaling when the arguments start.
How we write these guides
We avoid jargon where a plain word will do, and every claim is backed by at least one concrete example from a real series. Where a trope is contested, we say so and lay out the competing readings rather than pick a side. Spoilers are flagged before they appear. The guides are reviewed together with the franchise pages, so when a new season changes how a character reads, the examples get updated too.
Have an idea for a guide? Send us a suggestion. Many of the topics here started as reader questions.